John Frederick Lewis Award

Established by a gift from the widow of John F. Lewis, to honor the outstanding maritime lawyer who played a major role in various cultural institutions in Philadelphia. Since 1981 the award has recognized the best book published by the Society in a given year.

Prize Recipients

2016Pamela Webbin recognition of her book The Tower of the Winds in Athens – Greeks, Romans, Christians, and Muslims: Two Millennia of Continual Use.

2014Edward J. Olszewski for his monograph Parmigianino's Madonna of the Long Neck: A Grace Beyond the Reach of Art (Memoirs, volume 269).

2010A. Mark Smithfor his book Alhacen on Refraction: A Critical Edition, with English Translation and Commentary, of Book 7 of Alhacen's De Aspectibus, the Medieval Latin Version of Ibn al-Haytham's Kitab al-Manazir.

2009Stephen G. Brush for his book Choosing Selection: The Revival of Natural Selection in Anglo-American Evolutionary Biology, 1930-1970.

2001
A. Mark Smith for Alhacen's Theory of Visual Perception: A Critical Edition, with English Translation and Commentary, of the First Three Books of Alhacen's De aspectibus, the Medieval Latin Version of Ibn al-Haytham's Kitab al-Manazir.

2000
June Z. Fullmer (posthumous) for Young Humphry Davy: The Making of an Experimental Scientist.

1999
Francesca Rochberg for Babylonian Horoscopes.

1998
Whitfield J. Bell, Jr. for Patriot-Improvers, Biographical Sketches of Members of the American Philosophical Society, 1743-1769.

Martin W. Daly for The Sirdar. Sir Reginald Wingate and the British Empire in the Middle East.

1955
John C. Trever for “Studies in the Problem of Dating the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

1954
Robert Livingston Schuyler for “British Imperial Theory and American Territorial Policy - A Suggested Relationship.”

1953
Bart J. Bok for “Studies of the Southern Milky Way.”

1952
Otto Neugebauer for “The Babylonian Method for the Computation of the Last Visibilities of Mercury.”

1951
Joseph J. Spengler for “Economic Factors in the Development of Densely Populated Areas.”

1950
Sewall Wright for “Population Structure in Evolution.”

1949
Wallace O. Fenn for “Physiology of Exposures to Abnormal Concentrations of the Respiratory Gases.”

1948
Donald R. Young for “The Technique of Race Relations and Limiting Factors in the Development of the Social Sciences.”

1946
Enrico Fermi for “The Development of the First Chain Reacting Pile.”

1944
Samuel Noah Kramer for “Sumerian Literature: a Preliminary Survey of the Oldest Literature in the World, Sumerian Mythology: a Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium B.C.”

1943
George Gaylord Simpson for “The Beginnings of Vertebrate Paleontology in North America.”

1941
George Howard Parker for “Integumentary Color Changes of Elasmobranch Fishes of Mustelus, Melanophore Responses and Blood Supply (Vasomotor Changes), On the Neurohumors of the Color Changes in Catfishes and on Fats and Oils as Protective Agents for Such Substances.”

1938
Arthur J. Dempster for “New Methods in Mass Spectroscopy and Further Experiments on the Mass Analysis of the Chemical Elements.”

1937
Ralph E. Cleland for “Cyto-Taxonomic Studies on Certain Oenotheras from California and A Cytogenetic and Taxonomic Attack upon the Phylogeny and Systematics of Oenothera (Evening Primrose) with Special Reference to the Sub-genus Onagra.”